


Hell is an Open Door

by Wasuremono



Category: Achewood
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Metaphysics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-18 20:00:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13107495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wasuremono/pseuds/Wasuremono
Summary: Nice Pete goes to Hell. It's what he always knew it would be.





	Hell is an Open Door

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Longpig](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Longpig/gifts).



A tremor of the hand, a slip of the knife, and Nice Pete slides silently into Hell. The first sign of where he is, before his vision clears, is the smell: baking clay, crushed dinner-salt, and mine smells. West Virginia.

He finds himself standing in the dead dirt of the ravine beneath the old house. "The High Ground," Daddy always called it, the pride and glory of the Cropes clan; a man could hunt clear and fine from the porch of the High Ground, as far as his nerves and his gun allowed. Nice Pete starts the familiar ascent up the old goat-path. He knows, with the same bone-deep knowing that makes him recognize Hell when he sees it, that he cannot avoid the house. 

Chickens throng around the door, more chickens than the family ever could have afforded, even if they were of the position and temperament to want them. For a moment, he fears they will sense his death-blood upon him and descend, but instead they part before him as he follows his preordained path to the porch. The door is open, and Pep-Pop's gaslights are burning, ghost-blue and liver-yellow. From the kitchen comes the chirping sound of jennywater boiling on the stove, each bubble calling to its unclean kin in the creeks beyond the hills.

At the kitchen table, Daddy waits for him. His head has vanished entirely, leaving a smoothness at the shoulders, and when he speaks, his voice issues deep and bold from the center of his chest. "PETER. HOME AT LAST. WHAT BRINGS YOU HERE?" He rises, and he is taller and broader than life -- the dimensions, Nice Pete realizes, that Daddy was to him when he was only a small thing, his eyes freshly open. Precisely so. 

"My endeavors are my own business, Daddy," Nice Pete squeaks out. Daddy surely already knows about the Death Sound; there are never any secrets from Daddy, or from Hell. "A mistake." 

"ALWAYS A CARELESS BOY, YOU WERE. WELL, YOU'RE HOME NOW, AND WE'LL SORT THAT OUT. MOM-MOM?"

Mom-Mom, taller than Daddy, steps out from the kitchen nook. Every part of her is solid, from her shoes to her odor to the steady stream of glass-pale tears from both of her swollen eyes. No woman has been solid to Nice Pete since Mom-Mom was laid to rest, but she is far from restful now, and she is realer than all of Hell. In her hands is her good bakelite platter, piled high with rasmus cakes. "PETER," she coos, in tones that rattle in his mind. "EAT, DARLING. SETTLE BACK IN NICE AND SAFE NOW." Her smell shifts, from woman-smell to the tang of chemus witch.

"No." Nice Pete summons his adult reflexes, looking for an implement. Hell will not have prepared him an easy exit, his bones know, but the world has always presented him with ample opportunities, and the magnetism of Hell is beginning to loosen its grip. He is a resourceful man, full-grown and wonderfully clever, and his hands will wring the neck of the murderous God if required to by Fate. There are no implements. No tools of man adorn the household -- not Daddy's hammer and tongs, not Mom-Mom's cast-iron chickens. There is the table, and the window, and the rasmus cakes, and the terrible shapes of his parents. And that is all.

"MY SCAREDY BABY," intones Mom-Mom. "IT MUST BE HARD FOR A CITY BOY LIKE YOU TO COME HOME. COME AND EAT YOUR CAKE."

Nice Pete says a prayer in his heart, a prayer he has not found necessary or prudent in many years: _Jesus, show me the way out of this._ The chickens outside give a furious squawk, and Jesus rides from the chicken-tide. He wears a stovepipe hat and suspenders for his patched pants. This seems right. "Your soul is mistaken, Mr. Pete," says Jesus, in the tones of Nice Pete's old play-yard chums. "A terrible mistake made. Offices all mixed up. Come with me."

The Cropeses never put on airs to be window-glass-having folk, and Hell has not changed this. Before Mom-Mom or Daddy can stop him, he leaps through the open window and sprawls among the chickens. Jesus's hand on his shoulder is sure, and then another pair of hands join it, the hands of the Holy Spirit. Nice Pete rises up --

_Chill plastic under him, the rough woven texture of floor mats. Chill and pain. Physicality. A distant, familiar voice: "... should have told me this Death Sound gig meant actual death..."_

_A robot voice interrupts: "BELA... LUGOSI'S... DEAD"_

_"Shut up, you stupid old thing! I gotta call Dr. Andretti and hope he's workin' overtime tonight!"_

\-- and the hands of the two shards of God set Nice Pete down again.

Heaven is an empty gymnasium, with a fine scuffed rubber floor, as it has always been in Nice Pete's elusive dreams of school. In the faded mural on the wall, a Magreaux-man leads his dogs into the city, and the sky above reads GO MAGGIES! Nice Pete stands at the half-court line, watching the big double doors, waiting.

He is dimly aware that he must really be in the back of an Escalade, rushing to the doctor's or the chemist's, and that ministrations to his body might yet remove his spirit from this place. If this is so, then Jesus will walk through the doors, and Nice Pete will follow him. If it is not so... then someone else will walk through the door. An opponent. A target. Both. The knife is back in Nice Pete's hands, but if another implement strikes his fancy, he knows that it will be in his hands when the opponent arrives. Heaven always provides.

Nice Pete bounces on his heels and wonders how long it will take for someone to step inside his gymnasium. Minutes? A few hours? Surely no longer than that -- but if it is longer, he realizes, he does not care. The simple feeling of anticipation bears a unique satisfaction, the joy of imagining without the disappointment of knowing. The trouble with killing has always been the _after_ , when the sweetness fades and the body must wash its hands while the mind runs through where in the rotation of dumping sites one has left off. If one were to spend forever in the moment of anticipation, imagining the first succulent taste of pie on the tongue, and never consider the _after,_ would that not be Heaven itself?

Nice Pete waits. Heaven is an empty gymnasium. Heaven is a few minutes in the back of a speeding Escalade. Heaven is forever in the heart.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope this constitutes a new Nice Pete "adventure," despite being a little out there. Still, I've always wondered how he would interact with Achewood's bizarre metaphysics, and it was interesting to explore. Happy Yuletide!


End file.
